The only way was up from At World’s End, the lethal third instalment of the Pirates of the Caribbeanfilm series. Surely one of the most exhausting summer spectaculars ever devised, that film never swashed — it just buckled, breaking into expensive CGI smithereens, and going on for what felt like days. Proposing a fourth one to viewers staggering out at the time would have been like offering Lusitania survivors an action-packed cruise around Cape Horn.

A strategic pause, a reshuffle of key personnel, and here a fourth one is nonetheless, stamped with the dutifully meaningless title On Stranger Tides. Stranger, for starters, it’s not. Out of the hands of director Gore Verbinski, whose indulgent brand of stoner-surrealism has found a satisfying new home in Rango, it has instead fallen into the clutches of Rob Marshall (Chicago, Nine). The movie he gives us is at once more eager to please and all the more blatantly third-rate. It clomps along, doing all the baseline things you expect from it, and nothing besides.

Clarifying the plot, even to those well-versed in what the Dickens is going on by now, would be doing something the filmmakers themselves never manage.

It’s not so much a story as a single destination, to which every major character is bound; the script goes on, and on, about what’s to be found there. The fountain of youth, which Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), his old foe Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush, like a tranche of old ham retrieved from the back of the fridge) and everyone else seeks via treasure map, promises to rejuvenate one person at the cost of another’s sacrifice, but only if the right two chalices can be brought to it, a mermaid’s tear extracted into one of them, and the usual elaborate machinations put in place to postpone the big finale until everyone has bothered to show up.

Depp still has that lovely, floppy-limbed, seasick uncertainty of his, and there are a few frisky bits of business — swinging from a chandelier in a Georgian palace, scaling a palm tree despite being tied to it — that are worth the character’s while. Still, the movie never tops an early moment when he dives into a passing carriage in London, only to land in the lap of an astonished Judi Dench.

Sadly for those who’d pay handsomely to see a Depp-Dench spin on The African Queen, it’s only a cameo. Instead of the screwball sparring we want between Jack and Penélope Cruz, playing a feisty old flame installed as first mate for her father Blackbeard (Ian McShane), we get history lessons about their past, ad nauseam. Maybe the romance and comic chemistry were ablaze in those early days, but it feels like you probably had to be there.

This is the first of the series in 3D, and the main sense of waste — other than McShane, born to play a rotting pirate lord but settling for scraps — is how much gets lost in the murk. The lion’s share of the action plays out at night, rendered double-dark behind the greying specs. A visual tedium sets in early. My eyelids drooped for long stretches in the middle, and even vampiric mermaids and a buff missionary were struggling to prise them open.

Not for the first time, we’re at the mercy of too much clutter, a script with scurvy, and a blockbuster you could accuse of languishing. Landlubbing, even. Whose idea of a pirate’s life is this?

Pirates of the Caribbean 4:Seven Magazine review, by Jenny McCartney

Seven rating: * * *

It is testimony to the runaway popularity of Johnny Depp’s stylised turn as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean that in this, the fourth film of the series, nearly every character resembles him. In the early scenes, Jack plots with his father (played by Keith Richards, the original inspiration for his performance) and then has a battle with a woman impersonating him (Penélope Cruz who, with her bronzed face and kohl-rimmed eyes, is his female doppelganger anyway). Before long, the pair find themselves on the ship of the pirate Blackbeard (Ian MacShane, complete with mahogany tan, eyeliner, and... you get the picture) searching for the Fountain of Youth.

The script has dispensed with the more drearily virtuous characters, formerly played by Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, to exult in wholesale piratical villainy. But although the film disports itself with zest on the high seas of camp, it fails to touch the emotions.

There are some visually superb scenes: the court of King George (Richard Griffiths), with the bewigged monarch trapped in finery like a fancily wrapped cabbage; Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), drinking rum from a china tea set; and a group of murderously beautiful mermaids flocking around an enchanted pirate crew. Fans will get their money’s worth, but others might wish that the director Rob Marshall would vary the breakneck pace and allow more subtleties to sing.

CHARTING THE DEMISE OF THE PIRATES FRANCHISE

Pirates of the Caribbean - "A huge epic, always intelligent, and one exhibiting far more ambition than anything we would normally expect to see at this time of the year. Pirates of the Caribbean features sword-wielding men who get soaked, orchidaceous young ladies, a rousing score, and special effects that are genuinely special and effective." --Sukhdev Sandhu

Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest - "Pirate pictures should be lean and mean, quick-on-the-scabbard. The filmmakers, though, perhaps forgetting that the first picture was little more than The Mask of Zorro at sea, have decided to get dark and mythic on us. There are many stretches where there is lots of noise and attractively costumed characters and creatures running for their lives - and little explanation why. If you're not feeling in an indulgent mood, and if the air conditioning in your cinema isn't very powerful, it may all be too much." --Sukhdev Sandhu

Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End - "A tedious, convoluted mess in which even Johnny Depp is struggling for inspiration. I challenge anyone to summarise the plot of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. I'm all for piratical intrigue on the high seas, but after roughly the 38th double-crossing which causes one character to be imprisoned while the rest sail off in search of some crusty relic, you do reach a point where enough is enough." --Tim Robey